Sidney Planning Commission debate continues on accessory buildings

Debate that has been passed back and forth between city council members and planning commission members continues regarding the definition and restrictions of accessory buildings in residential zones at the City of Sidney Planning Commission meeting Monday night.

City council members present consisted of Aaron Barnes, Chris Gay and Joe Arterburn.

At the Sidney City Council meeting two weeks previous city attorney J. Leef had inserted language into the proposed statute and the council had asked if the square footage of accessory building could be increased to possibly 1,200 square feet. The planning commission had previously decided on 700 square feet.

“The language that I propose based on what I heard at council is that it is to-be-determined on the square footage and there is also an alternative of saying square footage or the square footage equal to the ground floor footprint,” Leef said.

“It was also discussed at the council that it might be equal to a percentage of the square feet of the floor print of property. There was also discussion on whether that footprint included the impervious services such as the driveway and patios and things like that.”

Leef said that as the ordinance reads a person could have a very large lot but still be very restrained when it came to size of accessory building if the primary building they had was only 700 square feet for example.

Council member Joe Arterburn said that a concerned citizen had come to the council during their previous meeting saying that the 700 square feet limit would not allow them enough space to achieve what they wanted with the planned accessory building.

City council member Chris Gay said that the biggest change that the council wanted to see with the proposed ordinance was the size allowed of the building and that the other changes were minor. He asked the commissioners how the 700 square foot restriction had been decided.

“Seven-hundred isn’t a magic number. I’m less concerned about the size than I am coverage ratio and that the house gets built first (prior to an accessory building),” commission member Jamie Gull said.

When Gay was asked as to how the council came up with 1,200 square feet for a limit, he responded that the council was trying to think of how much space would be required for someone to shelter bigger items such as boats.

“Our problem is we keep getting hit up by the public about all these big sheds behind houses and you got to agree with them. For example, your neighbor builds a 30-by-60 garage next to their house and blocks the sunshine or ruins your view,” commission chairman Jerry Spiker said. “The public is concerned about that. But what do you do about a three-car garage or building to hold all these people’s toys?”

Community member Roger Gallaway said that compared to the lot and the primary building, 700 square feet might look huge or tiny. He suggested that basing the size limit on a percentage of the house footprint might be the best idea.

“I don’t think the idea here is to overly-limit people’s ability to use their lot for their purposes. I think in fact it should be the other way around; we should be allowing people for whatever purpose they deem appropriate within certain general guidelines, which would take out some of the extremes,” Gull said. “Not to control every single accessory building to be built in town, but it’s to take out those extreme cases where it’s really becoming abusive and detrimental to the neighbors.”

At the city council meeting it was also discussed whether or not a common wall should be required to be attached to the primary residence to make an “attached accessory building.”

“An accessory building in my opinion is beyond just your garage. It’s another building,” planning commission member John Phillips said.

Phillips then asked what the minimum square footage required to be attached by a common wall should be.

“I think it’s good that we have control and we have good definitions as far as common walls and what is a garage and what is an accessory building,” Gallaway said.

The planning commission decided a difference between “detached garage” and “detached accessory building” must also be made or the terms should be combined. Currently it is stated that a garage sits beside the residence, while an accessory building is to the rear of the residence.

It was decided that the city attorney would come back with different language before the commission to redraft a proposed ordinance to vote on.

Language Leef proposed on-the-fly was, “It shall not exceed 1,200 square feet or the square footage equal to the ground floor print of the principle building - which ever is smaller. In calculating the ground floor footprint of the principle building for the purpose of this section no attached buildings or impervious surfaces attached there shall too be included,” she said.

It was inquired as to whether this ordinance would allow a resident to file a variance later on.

Leef said that a community member could only bring it in to the board of adjustments if the land creates a hardship for the building process.

“They can if the land itself is strangely shaped so that you couldn’t build a building in it,” Leef said. “I don’t think a majority of the time you are going to have that issue however.”

Commission member Dave McCarville noted that the planning commission had spent a lot of time coming up with the definitions that they had and if the council wished to change them the council had the final say and could do as they wished.

“I would rather have the revision come from you guys due to all the time you have spent on it and see a cleaning up the language and better definitions,” Arterburn said.

The matter was tabled until the next planning commission meeting in February where the redraft will be presented.